


Shadow on my Mind

by yet_intrepid



Series: Hurt/Comfort December [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Consent Issues, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Gen, Hunter Mary, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2735633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t understand,” John says, when he wakes wide-eyed with fear and breathing like he’s just run for his life. “You can’t. So don’t pretend you can.”</p><p>But Mary understands far more than John knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow on my Mind

**Author's Note:**

> December 6 prompt: torture.
> 
> Title from Bastille's "These Streets" : all that's left behind / is a shadow on my mind.

“You don’t understand,” John says, when he wakes wide-eyed with fear and breathing like he’s just run for his life. “You can’t. So don’t pretend you can.”

Mary doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t think, either. She runs a hand through his hair instead, shushing him back to sleep. When he’s stilled, she slips out of bed and pulls on a cardigan over her thin sleeveless nightgown.

In the living room, she settles on the couch with her knees up to her chest. There’s a silver letter opener on the coffee table (“family heirloom,” she’d told John) and she grips it tight. Having a hilt in her hand is solid in more ways than one. Comforting. She’s got nightmares of her own, but she hasn’t forgotten how to face them.

Still, when she closes her eyes in the dark, the memories come.

(She is fourteen and she smells like death for days. No amount of rose-scented soap can wash it away. The blisters on her hands from digging up graves fade slowly into calluses but the skin of her heart remains tender, aching.)

(She is sixteen and she goes to school with a deep cut on her thigh. The bandage rubs against her jeans and she lies to her best friend. So far as Beth Godwin knows, no ghost ever threw Mary into a tree two states away from home. Her mother’s knife was never hurled at her by a long-dead hand.)

The hilt anchors her.

(She is seventeen. She lies in an abandoned barn with her pulse pounding. She shivers.)

(She is seventeen. She tries to be grateful that it’s the middle of December, because she won’t have to explain school absences. Of course, if she ends up dead, that’ll have to be explained somehow. But there’ll be bigger problems then.)

(She is seventeen. The vampires make a little cut with a big knife. She’s got mouths on her and she wants to scream. But it’s dumb shit like that that’ll get you killed.)

The cardigan is warm; the nightgown is soft; the couch sinks to cushion her.  

(She is seventeen. They say they’ll turn her when they’ve had their fun. Say she’ll like it, being one of them. She doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t said anything in two days.)

(She is seventeen. It’s been two days of dizziness, of itching cuts and bound hands. She shivers. She hums under her breath. She tries to get out of her ropes but there’s always someone watching.)

She is twenty-one. She is home.

(She is seventeen. She makes it out.)

(She is seventeen. They bring her back.)

She is home.

(She is seventeen and she’s under the knife for real this time. They won’t turn someone who runs. She screams now. Kicks and bites and makes all the noise she can. Anything she can do to hold on to life a little longer. She holds on she holds on she holds on)

(She is seventeen. She wakes in her parents’ arms, in a room filled with corpses.)

She is home.

The hilt of the letter opener has grown warm in her hand. She sets it down and takes a deep breath, reminding herself she doesn’t need it now. Nobody’s hunting her down, and she’s certainly not doing the hunting.

But if she needs it, it’s there.

She goes back up to bed.

In the morning, John still looks haunted. Mary tries to ask if he’s doing all right, but an edge of anger rises in his voice.

“Don’t pretend you can understand what I’ve been through,” he says again.

“Okay,” says Mary. “Okay.”

Sometimes she wants to tell him. Tell him every last story, list every last cut and dug-up grave. Ghosts and demons and all. Prove to him she understands living on a battlefront, fighting for your life.

But truth is, she doesn’t trust him to understand.

Not that he can’t, exactly. Maybe he just wouldn’t. Would decide not try, even.

Mary’s not taking that risk. She knows how to face her own nightmares, and she’ll keep them locked away where they belong.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, Mary's nightgowns totally look more like [this](http://www.rustyzipper.com/full/227819.jpg) than like what she wears in the Pilot flashback.


End file.
